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Narcissa watched in horror as the Potter boy emerged from the trees looking utterly defenceless and as pale and scrawny as her Draco had become. Two seventeen-year olds caught up in horrors when they were still so young. Potter from before he had even been born, groomed his whole life for this. She wondered if he had ever known what would happen here, at the end of it all. If he had known that the hope he stood for, for all of them, had never existed.
Silence fell and she clamped her lips together in a tight line, holding her breath. She would not breathe through her nose because the smell, the smell of burning and death, lingered in the air causing jubilation amongst the Death Eaters but not for her. For her it caused pain and sorrow, like those up at the castle were currently experiencing. Those whom the Dark Lord considered weak for mourning their dead. It was not weak, it was a kindness, a strength that he would never understand.
Bella jumped forwards then in glee, screeching to Merlin and Morgana, thrilled at the death to come. Thrilled as she had been to torture Hermione Granger in Narcissa’s home. Thrilled as she had been when she cast down their niece, Andromeda’s daughter, a new mother, leaving an orphaned babe in her wake.
Oh Andromeda.
A pain shot through Narcissa’s heart as she considered the worst mistake in her sorry excuse for a life. If she had stood by Andromeda, if she had listened to her about Lucius, about what Mother and Father wanted her to be, would she still be in this mess? Andromeda wouldn’t be alone now, but Narcissa also wouldn’t have Draco. Her son. Her strength. She would do anything for him, and she had no idea where he currently was. But she thought she would have felt something if he were gone. If he had perished with so many of his classmates up at the castle.
She hoped for all that was good in him that he hadn’t been the death of any of them. That his face had not been the last that any of his classmates had seen. He had never been able to manage the unforgivables very well, a meagre crucio or short-lived imperio here and there, but never the killing curse. Never. In the midst of battle however…
The flash of bright green reflected in the tears pooling in her eyes as the Dark Lord cast his final Avada Kedavra at Harry Potter, bringing an end to it all. She quickly blinked them back, her mask sliding into place before anyone noticed.
And then Bella was screeching again as the Dark Lord was knocked to the floor, the forest around them dark once more apart from the ominous red glow above the trees. Narcissa could just make out the mound on the other side of the clearing that was the Potter boy. She shut out all noise and focused on the dark shape, body twisted away from them. He had fallen that way, without making a sound. The Dark Lord had called him a coward but Narcissa thought the opposite. The boy had been brave. He had always been brave.
He had made no noise.
She found herself moving across the clearing, glad for once that the Dark Lord had chosen her for something, towards where Potter lay motionless on the forest floor. Kneeling behind him with her back to the crowd of onlookers, she leant over the prone form, her hair falling like a curtain in front of his face.
He looked so vulnerable, eyes closed as if in sleep, mouth agape, his glasses crooked. She had been right about how skinny he seemed. This past year had taken its toll on him and there were deep shadows beneath his eyes, giving his face the same sunken look as she’d seen recently on her own son’s face. The way he’d fallen from the curse had him curled in on himself, knees to his chest and arms bent awkwardly upwards in front of his face as if in the foetal position, protecting himself.
Her heart was beating heavily in her chest. A pounding rhythm making it known that not all hope had been lost. It was still beating within her at least. She pressed a sweating palm to her chest, trying to quiet the sound and calm herself, taking deep, desperate breaths through parted lips.
She moved her palm from her own chest to Potter’s and thought she felt the slightest flutter of a heartbeat there. She swallowed down the sudden lump in her throat and concentrated on what she was feeling, aware that it could be her own pulse in her fingertips.
She tilted her head so that they were cheek to cheek, his rough stubble grazing her skin, and she was certain that she could still feel the warmth of body heat radiating off him. A shaking breath escaped her lips, briefly parting the curtain of pale hair. She was still clinging desperately to the hope that the boy before her represented. Hope for Draco, for herself, for Andromeda. For the future of all of them. The voice in the back of her mind told her she was probably foolish as she found the words slipping onto the tip of her tongue.
“Is Draco alive? Is he in the castle?” she whispered, asking what she was most hopeful for, what she most wanted to know.
She choked back a sob, clenching her palm where it still lay on his chest, as a quiet voice whispered back, right into her ear.
“Yes.”
Narcissa sat up, taking deep, ragged breaths until she was composed again. Until she could shut out all emotion from her voice. She knew that if she didn’t manage to pull this off, they were all done for and it wouldn’t matter that, right now, Draco and the boy at her knees were still alive.
She had to get this just right.
Pushing herself off the ground to her feet, she turned slowly to meet those terrible, red eyes.
“He is dead.”